The hairy rockrose (Cistus incanus), a native to the Mediterranean tea plant, contains a large quantity of polyphenols. Especially in Greece the cistus-tea has a long tradition, however, has passed into oblivion over the years. In 1999, Cistus Incanus has won the „European Medicinal Plant of the Year“ award and was thus rediscovered. (More info, incl. scientific studies, down below.)

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

It’s a flu virus so deadly that scientists once halted research on the disease because governments feared it might be used by terrorists to stage a biological attack.

Yet despite the fact that the H5N1 avian influenza has killed 60% of the 650 humans known to be infected since it was identified in Hong Kong 17 years ago, the “bird flu” virus has yet to evolve a means of spreading easily among people.

Now Dutch researchers have found that the virus needs only five favorable gene mutations to become transmissible through coughing or sneezing, like regular flu viruses.

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

Researchers who voluntarily stopped work on a potent strain of influenza they created in the lab are hoping to end the moratorium on their studies.

In January 2012, scientists agreed to halt their research on the dangerous H5N1 avian flu–or bird flu virus–that they had manipulated to become more easily transmissible from person to person. H5N1 became known as avian influenza because it thrives in fowl populations, including ducks and migrating geese, and while it caused severe illness in people, the virus was less adept at jumping between human hosts, and presumably, among other mammals as well. Since 1997, when the virus was identified in Hong Kong, about 600 people have been infected and nearly 60% have died.

But two groups of scientists, one led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and another led by Yoshi Kawaoke at University of Wisconsin, independently managed to create strains of H5N1 in their labs that could pass between ferrets, marking the first time that a version of the avian flu could easily spread among mammals. The potential for a pandemic with H5N1, which, to date, may have a 50% mortality rate among those infected, was concerning enough to biosafety officials that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) requested that scientific journals not publish the details of how the virulent strains of H5N1 were made. The papers, the officials feared, could serve as a how-to guide for human catastrophe if the results were used by bioterrorists.

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

From the article:

“The death of all 40 ferrets by the Indonesia H5N1 highlights the need for an aggressive H5 vaccination campaign, …”

“What scares me is that this could happen and this could happen so easily”

….air flowed into the next cage. killing all 40 exposed ferrets.

The above comments are from an ABC news video report on the H5N1 transmission experiments by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands. His quote above highlights his concerns and the second comment highlights the level of lethality seen for the H5N1 that was used to infect one of the ferrets which maintained its high level of lethality after acquiring the full set of 5 changes in 2 genes. This level of lethality was in marked contrast to experiments by Yoshi Kawoaka which also achieved efficient transmission in ferrets but failed to kill at levels higher that H1N1pdm09, which was used as a genetic background for the H5 gene.

Thus, two very different approaches were used to achieve efficient transmission by H5N1 with natural acquisitions, raising serious concerns that such changes could lead to a catastrophic pandemic. However, recent debate has been more focused on H5N1 as a bioweapon, or a true case fatality rate that is orders of magnitude lower than the 60% CFR in confirmed cases.

However, the above ferret studies indicate the H5N1 from Indonesia (Fouchier experiment) is far more lethal than the Vietnam H5N1 H5 reassortant (Kawaoka experiment), and those citing a lower CFR based on serological studies are the same scientists downplayed the ability of H1N1pdm09 with a truncated F2 gene or an acquired receptor binding domain (RBD) change, D225G.

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

From the article:

“H5N1 remains a poor choice as a bioweapon, because it can’t be controlled once released, … , highlighting the need for an aggressive H5 vaccination effort.”

However, a paper that shows how to makes H5 readily transmissible had already been published in September last year by Reuben Donis and colleagues at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. His team equipped a different H5N1 with the same two mutations as Fouchier. He also added a third mutation, and switched other genes to make it transmissible among ferrets.

The above comments add considerable clarity for the requirements for efficient transmission of H5N1 in a ferret model. The above CDC paper has been published and therefore the receptor binding domain changes and associated influenza backgrounds are known. The transmitting H5N1 had 3 receptor binding domain changes (Q196R, Q226L, G228S), and two have been discussed in tandem for years, so it is virtually certain that the two RBD changes introduced by the Fouchier lab were Q226L and G228S. Similarly, the two viruses used in the above study, A/egret/Egypt/1162/2006 and A/Vietnam/1203/2004 have PB2 E627K, which is known to increase virulence and transmission in mammals, so the three changes introduced by the Fouchier lab are almost certainly Q226L and G228S in HA and E627K in PB2.

The young scientist, normally calm and measured, seemed edgy when he stopped by his boss’s office.

“You are not going to believe this one,” he told Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. “I think we have an airborne H5N1 virus.”

The news, delivered one afternoon last July, was chilling. It meant that Dr. Fouchier’s research group had taken one of the most dangerous flu viruses ever known and made it even more dangerous – by tweaking it genetically to make it more contagious.

What shocked the researchers was how easy it had been, Dr. Fouchier said. Just a few mutations was all it took to make the virus go airborne.

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

Baxter Healthcare Corp. has announced it is recalling roughly 300,000 doses of its Preflucel influenza vaccine due to what it says is an excessive number of adverse events. Baxter is the same drug company that was caught inserting Avian Flu Virus into flu vaccines back in 2009 (http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html).

The UK’s Daily Mail reports that a high number of individuals injected with an apparently tainted batch of Preflucel have been reporting side effects like fatigue, muscle pain, and headaches. The vaccine, which was crafted specifically for those with egg allergies, has only been in use since March when it was first approved for use in the UK.

South Korea, already battling a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in livestock, yesterday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu at poultry farms.

The H5N1 avian influenza virus has been detected in ducks in the city of Cheonan, South Chungcheong province, and in chickens in the city of Iksan in North Jeolla province, the Agriculture Ministry said.

It said that in response the authorities have culled affected poultry and quarantined duck and chicken breeding farms in affected areas.

The government has raised the bird flu alert to “caution” from “attention”, while its foot-and-mouth disease alert remained at the highest level, the ministry added. So far, 540,000 pigs, cattle and other livestock have been culled.

South Korea has no human cases of the high-severity bird flu strain. It has had three outbreaks of the virus at poultry farms in the past 10 years, the ministry said.

(NaturalNews) The New Zealand Minister of Health, Hon Tony Ryall, has asked the Ministry of Health officials to urgently advise him on issues raised about a “swine flu” vaccine produced by Baxter International Inc. This follows his receipt of a letter raising concerns about whether vaccines produced by Baxter for “swine flu” can be trusted.

In an open letter to all members of the New Zealand House of Parliament, Penny Bright, Media Spokesperson for Water Pressure Group, a judicially recognized Public Watchdog for Metrowater, water and Auckland regional governance matters, raises a series of questions and concerns about the safety of the vaccine. She demands to know whether Baxter products are currently being used in New Zealand for the “swine flu”, “bird flu” or any other type of flu.

Bright highlights the fact that Baxter is currently facing criminal charges for producing contaminated “bird flu” vaccine that date back to February of this year when it became known that the company had sent out 72 kilos of live “bird flu” virus supplied by the World Health Organization in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four countries. These charges were filed by journalist Jane Burgermeister of Austria.

Burmeister’s allegations claim that clear evidence exists that the pharmaceutical company and international government agencies actively conspired in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death.

Last December, the Austrian branch of Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it could not replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with a sample from the shipment had died. It was discovered that the sample contained live H5N1, which was to be used by Baxter to make vaccine. Baxter claims the two mixed by error, and called the incident a simple “accident”.

About my 2-hour interview with the Austrian anti terrorism unit and the criminal charges filed in Florida

In the meantime, I’ve been for an interview at the

The Security Directorate Vienna
For the Protection of the Constitution
and For Fighting Terrorism

following an invitation, which can be seen at this link.

http://wakenews.net/Austrian_Anti_Terrorism_Unit_Invitation.JPG

I presented more evidence, arguments and facts concerning Baxter and the 72 kilos of live bird flu material, which was sent out to 16 laboratories from its facilities in Austria in February – material which was destined for vaccines in four countries: Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany and Austria.

The Austrian Health Minister Alois Stöger confirmed that Baxter sent out 72 kilos in Parliamentary Answers dated May 20th, 2009.

He also revealed he had undertaken no steps to conduct a full in investigation into Baxter’s breach of biosafety level 3 regulations.

http://wakenews.net/Austrian_Parliamentary_Answers_re_Baxter.pdf

He claimed the 72 kilos of live bird flu material had been destroyed, but gave no details of that process; the suspicion has been raised the 72 kilos is still in circulation.

The original parliamentary questions tabled on March 20th (also in German), — which the Health Minister was obliged by law to answer within 8 weeks –, can also be seen on the download-site for all documents on a secure website in Switzerland:

http://wakenews.net/html/jane_burgermeister.html

Under Austria’s Influenza Pandemic Plan of 2005, WHO and the EU are set to take charge of Austria via a special crisis management team (SKKM) to be set up in the Federal Ministery of Interior in the event of a “pandemic” emergency.

Innoculating the entire Austrian population with (Baxter) shots is a declared objective of the SKKM. The injections will contain a mix of “whole virus”, mercury and adjuvants – and so be very toxic.

This week I will file a new set of criminal charges against the Health Minister, Alois Stöger, the Chancellor Werner Faymann, Dr Dagmar Belakowitsch-Jenewein and others for their role in the cover up of Baxter’s crime here in Austria.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a “reassortant” virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.”

Pigs stick out their snouts through a fence at a farm. (REUTERS)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Seven people have been diagnosed with a strange and unusual new kind of swine flu in California and Texas, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.

All seven people have recovered but the virus itself is a never-before-seen mixture of viruses typical among pigs, birds and humans, the CDC said.

“We are likely to find more cases,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat told a telephone briefing. “We don’t think this is time for major concern around the country.”

The CDC reported the new strain of swine flu on Tuesday in two boys from California’s two southernmost counties.

Now, five more cases have been seen — all found via normal surveillance for seasonal influenza. None of the patients, whose symptoms closely resembled seasonal flu, had any direct contact with pigs.

“We believe at this point that human-to-human spread is occurring,” Schuchat said. “That’s unusual. We don’t know yet how widely it is spreading … We are also working with international partners to understand what is occurring in other parts of the world.”

Two of the new cases were among 16-year-olds at the same school in San Antonio “and there’s a father-daughter pair in California,” Schuchat said. One of the boys whose cases was reported on Tuesday had flown to Dallas but the CDC has found no links to the other Texas cases.

STRANGE MIXTURE

Unusually, said the CDC’s Nancy Cox, the viruses all appear to carry genes from swine flu, avian flu and human flu viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

“We haven’t seen this strain before, but we hadn’t been looking as intensively as we have,” Schuchat said. “It’s very possible that this is something new that hasn’t been happening before.”

The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

“At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.

“But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.”

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.

Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a “serious error” on Baxter’s part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.

On Friday, the company’s director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.

“It was live,” Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls “experimental virus material,” was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine — including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly — at a facility in the Czech Republic.

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — China said it culled more than 13,000 poultry after discovering the H5N1 strain of avian flu on a farm in Xinjiang province, five days after saying none of the human cases this year were linked to outbreaks among birds.

The outbreak in the northwestern province, which began at the start of this month, is the country’s first since December, China’s Chief Veterinary Officer Yu Kangzhen said in a Feb. 10 report(PDF) to the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris. It said 1,330 farmed birds were infected with avian flu and 519 died.

Authorities have vaccinated 350,000 birds in Xinjiang in an effort to stop the virus spreading, Yu said in the report. China’s Ministry of Agriculture said the outbreak had been controlled, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

A 31-year-old woman died in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi on Jan. 23 after contracting the H5N1 virus, the official Xinhua News Agency said on Jan. 24, citing the regional health department.

The Ministry of Agriculture said there had been no avian flu outbreaks among poultry in the provinces where human infections were reported, the official China Daily reported on Feb. 6.

Eight people have been infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu in China this year and five have died, Nyka Alexander, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News today.

Questions are arising over how long the Tamiflu retro-viral drugs being stockpiled by the New Zealand government — and many other countries — will remain an effective weapon against the next flu pandemic.

Tamiflu-resistant forms of the “ordinary” seasonal influenza are rapidly spreading and the drug may be ineffective in fighting the dominant flu strain in South Africa this winter.

World Health Organisation (WHO) data shows tests on 107 people in South Africa with the H1N1 strain — one of the three most common flu viruses in humans — found all had a mutant bug resistant to Tamiflu, the WHO said in a statement. Only one of the patients was taking Tamiflu at the time of sampling.

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus.

The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug.

Flu Mist a popular over the counter live flu vaccine has been found to contain two H5N1 DNA markers, these markers seem to have been sewn into the flu mist vaccine to ensure that H5N1 or another strain of Avian Flu goes pandemic.
This is going to cause major problems before long, it is imperative that people are warned about flu mist.

“However, since then, there have been 1,268 cases of extraordinary behavior reported, of which 85 percent were from teenagers. They reportedly committed suicide by jumping out of buildings or into cars.”

Concerns are rising over side effect of bird flu drug Tamiflu on teenagers.

Tamiflu is Swiss-based Hoffman-La Roche’s antiviral for general influenza A and B but is also used to combat bird flu. However, worries have surfaced about the possibility of the medicine causing mental disorders among teenagers.

With fear of the H5N1 virus sweeping the nation, the government has doubled the quantity of the drug in storage, as it is the most effective treatment against avian influenza.

Whether to prescribe the pills with risks of side-effects such delusions or other disorders is being widely discussed among medical experts.

Although the drug has been the only medicine accredited to be effective against the H5N1 virus strain by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Japanese and Korean governments restricted its being prescribed to teenagers last year.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration announced that the drug should not be prescribed to those between 10 to 19 years old except for emergencies.

According to Roche, there has not been a reported case of side effects here, but the Seoul Shinmun, a local daily, reported that a woman in her 30s said she had nightmares after taking the drug in 2005.

(And Tamiflu is a nightmare. There are sources that claim that it was not designed to heal but to increase the death rate in case of a flu outbreak. – The Infinite Unknown

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Efforts to contain bird flu are failing in Indonesia, increasing the possibility that the virus may mutate into a deadlier form, the leading U.N. veterinary health body warned.The H5N1 bird flu virus is entrenched in 31 of the country’s 33 provinces and will cause more human deaths, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement released late Tuesday.

“I am deeply concerned that the high level of virus circulation in birds in the country could create conditions for the virus to mutate and to finally cause a human influenza pandemic,” FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said.

Indonesia “has not succeeded in containing the spread of avian influenza,” Domenech said, adding that there must be “major human and financial resources, stronger political commitment and strengthened coordination.”

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 236 people in a dozen countries worldwide since it began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. It has been found in birds in more than 60 countries, but Indonesia has recorded 105 deaths, almost half the global tally, according to the World Health Organization. Continue reading »

(NaturalNews) According to a list compiled by Dr. Patricia Doyle at rense.com, a host of strange ingredients are used to make up Hoffman-La Roche’s anti-flu drug Tamiflu, which has recently been connected with bizarre behavior, mostly in children.

Patients using Tamiflu — which many nations are stocking up on as a way to combat a possible pandemic of the deadly H5N1 bird flu — reported delirium, hallucinations, delusions, convulsions, disturbed consciousness and abnormal behavior. The FDA reports that side effects reported with Tamiflu include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bronchitis, stomach pain, dizziness and headache.

Three people on the drug have committed suicide by leaping to their deaths, and one Japanese child reportedly ran out of his house and responded to his name in growls after treatment.

According to Doyle and internet drug index RxList.com, the 75-milligram Tamiflu capsules contain:

Doyle warns that the reactions possibly linked to the drug warrant caution and she suggests that anyone who has reacted to Tamiflu in the past discontinue use and consult a medical professional. She adds that the medicines chlorpropamide, methotrexate and phenylbutazone may adversely react with Tamiflu.

“This list of ingredients is downright amazing,” said Mike Adams, author of “How to Beat the Bird Flu.” “It contains an antifreeze used to winterize RVs, a chemical sweetener known to promote cancer, and a chemical preservative also known to promote cancer. Is it any wonder this drug, with all its chemical interactions, causes some people to go crazy and leap from tall buildings?

“This is yet one more reason why the public needs to be informed about safe, natural anti-viral herbs and bir remedies,” he said. “The active ingredient in Tamiflu is derived from a Chinese medicine herb, for example, yet no public official is telling people the name of that herb. They want Americans to buy the high-profit medicines, not stock up on natural herbs.”